Operation Write Home

Operation Write Home provides a touching way to support America's armed forces by turning volunteers into makers of greeting cards.  The handmade cards are blank on the inside and meant to encourage a note home to family or letters to friends.  

People all around the world are participating.  And card makers are nearing a million card milestone.   Operation Write Home makes it easy to volunteer because people can create from the comfort of their own homes.

For those who are intimidated by making personal greeting cards, there are other ways to help out Operation Write Home.  Click the link to find out more.

Operation Homefront: Helping Military Families

Operation Homefront (OH) was founded in 2002 as a support system for families of deployed service members after 9/11. This 501 (c)(3) nonprofit is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, with 25 chapters serving 30 states and the main office taking care of everyone else. The lowest-paid service members (E-1 through E-6 enlisted ranks) constitute the majority of those receiving assistance.

The goal of Operation Homefront  is to offer emergency financial and other types of assistance to the families of our service members and wounded warriors.  Evictions, child care, food insecurity, and auto repair are just some of the areas where OH can step up to help.  Recently, laptops were donated to troops deploying overseas.

A network of generous donors makes Operation Homefront's efforts successful.

Visit Operation Homefront's youtube page to see what the organization is doing for the holidays.

Share Our Strength

Twenty percent of American children don't have enough to eat. Their hunger and food insecurity doesn't manifest as rail thin limbs and bloated tummies like their counterparts in other countries, but hungry American kids face the same risk lacking the energy to learn, grow and thrive physically and intellectually.

The nonprofit, Share our Strength aims to end child hunger in America by 2015.  Here's a look at what the organization is trying to tackle:

• More than 16 million children in America are at risk of hunger.
• 15.7 million children in America live in poverty. 
• 18.6 million children are SNAP/food stamps recipients.
• Over 20 million children get a free or reduced-price school lunch.
• 10.5 million children get a free or reduced-price school breakfast.
• 6 out of 7 children do not get the free summer meals they are eligible for.

Share Our Strength partners with major corporations and donors mobilizing to create community wealth and  promote lasting change.

Hoops of Hope: Shooting for the Stars

In the spring of 2004, Austin Gutwein saw a video about orphaned children who had lost their parents to AIDS. After watching the video, The nine-year-old knew these kids weren’t any different from him except in magnitude of suffering.

Austin felt God calling him to do something to help them. He decided to shoot free throws and on World AIDS Day, 2004, he shot 2,057 free throws to represent the 2,057 kids who would be orphaned during his day at school. Friends and family sponsored Austin and he was able to raise almost $3,000. That year, the money was used by World Vision to provide hope to 8 orphan children. Source.

That event was the beginning of Hoops of Hope, the world’s largest free-throw marathon. Shooting basket balls, participants raise awareness and funds for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. All funds raised by the event go directly to care for kids in highly affected areas.

Feeding the 5000

'Feeding of 5,000' to Combat Waste

Feeding the 5000 showed people in London the insane level of food waste going on every day by preparing a feast for thousands with discarded and unwanted food.  A crooked carrot might be tossed at a supermarket because aesthetically that carrot isn't desirable.  Shockingly, all of the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be nutritiously fed on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK, and Europe.

"The bread and other cereal products thrown away in UK households alone would have been enough to lift 30 million of the world's hungry people out of malnourishment." Source.

Food businesses, restaurants and retailers are asked to sign up to the Feeding the 5000 Pledge and commit to ending the scandalous amount of waste.

Harlem Children's Zone

Serving 17,000 children in a hundred block area, Harlem Children's Zone implements a new method to end the cycle of generational poverty. An entire community is empowered with information at the same time that the educational needs of the community's children are being met.  Parents learn developmental milestones to watch for and discover ways to turn ordinary life at home into an educational experience.

The Harlem Children's Zone sees families through a child's college experience.  Ninety percent of the nonprofit's high school participants go on to study on the university level. This incoming freshman class obtained over $6.4 million in scholarships and grants.

Harmony, Hope & Healing

Music possesses a power that reaches beyond entertainment and performance.  Harmony, Hope & Healing harnesses the creative and therapeutic aspect of song as a way of offering dignity and spiritual healing to homeless and underserved women, men and children. This Chicago-based nonprofit was founded in 2000 by singer and educator Marge Nykaza.  Programs offer a chance to learn, heal, and experience a sense of community:

• Adult music sessions
• Musical English lessons for non native speakers
• Senior group piano lessons
• Senior choir rehearsals
• Parent / child music classes
• Children’s music classes
• Pre-school music classes
• Annual music event at each program site
• Choir performances in public or private venues

Harmony, Hope & Healing "delivers direct services in the form of therapeutic music programs that offer healing from the devastating effects of poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, substance abuse and the isolation of aging."  (Mission Statement)

Mama Hope: Community, Hope & Progress in Africa

Africans and Americans come together in celebration of Mama Hope's Campaign: Stop the Pity. Unlock the Potential. The organization believes the essential first step in changing the world is telling the story of connection instead of contrasting images of wealth and developing nations and showing human potential instead demoralizing poverty.

People everywhere have talent and capacity, and people everywhere share a desire to be able to use those gifts to improve their lives and the lives of the people they care about. To learn more about the projects we undertake to unlock this potential and get involved: ‪http://www.mamahope.org

Mama Hope was founded after Nyla Rodgers lost her mother and visited Kenya to visit a young man whose education was made possible by her mother's sponsorship.  Rodgers learned hundreds were actually helped through her mother's efforts.

Thus far, 76,000 people have benefited from Mama Hope projects in agriculture, food security, water, health, education, shelter, women’s empowerment and the environment.

One Spirit Lifting the Lakota People

While the world reels in apprehension about global markets, one North American nation experiences 87% unemployment and an average life expectancy of 50 years.  The people of the Lakota Nation live with hunger, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and malnutrition on an epidemic scale.

One Spirit works in partnership with the Lakota people on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to care for those in need through food, heat, art and youth programs..

Despite constant hardship and unrelenting adversity, the Lakota preserve their cultural and traditions for their children and the world:

• About 1/3 of the population still speak the Lakota language
• Almost all maintain their traditional spiritual and cultural beliefs
• They are leaders in knowledge of environmental preservation.
• They are a sharing society - when one eats, they all eat - or they all do without.
• Their exquisite beadwork, quillwork, quilting, sewing, painting is art at its best.
• They wish to find ways to be self-sufficient. (Source)

One Spirit provides opportunities for anyone to directly sponsor an elder, families, children and a Safe House.

One Spirit is recognized as a top notch nonprofit by Great Nonprofits (dot) com.

World Clothes Line: a mission to clothe the world

 

Basic human needs include food, water, and shelter, but clothing matters, too.  A young woman, Mallory Brown, realized the import of proper clothing after encountering truly impoverished people in Laos.  Clothing protects a body from sun and wind burn, frost bite, and insect bites.  A habit many of us take for granted, changing into clean clothes every day promotes good health by preventing infection, chafing, skin disorders, and the spreading of viruses.

"However, in cases of extreme poverty, clothing is often one of the first needs to be ignored. Statistically, more than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day. Almost 2.7 billion people (that's 40% of our population) survive on less than two dollars per day. In such circumstances, daily necessities like food and water take top priority. Clothing, which can be reworn, therefore is reworn. Day after day. After day..."  --World Clothes Line

Brown decided to found a clothing company with a "buy one, give one free" business model. While World Clothes Line is a for-profit venture, profit is not its mission.  Success is measured in philanthropy.

Sustainable Prisons: What If?

Serving hard time means facing a hard reality once a sentence is served.  Former convicts often finish their sentences unprepared for jobs, much less professions, and are generally considered undesirable as employees.  An experiment (and actually a number of research projects) being conducted in Washington state brings science and nature to prisons and prisoners.  One goal is education for inmates and sustainable job training.

"We conduct ecological research and conserve biodiversity by forging collaborations with scientists, inmates, prison staff, students, and community partners. Equally important, we help reduce the environmental, economic, and human costs of prisons by inspiring and informing sustainable practices."  Sustainable Prisons Project

Washington State Department of Corrections partners with Evergreen State College by way of the Sustainable Prisons Project.   Current inmates and ex-offenders who show an interest are taught sustainability, green-collar jobs, and given educational opportunities that advance scientific research.  Some prisoners do organic gardening.  Others are trained as beekeepers.  One program has prisoners raising the endangered Oregon spotted frogs for release back into the wild.  Endangered plant life is being cultivated for transplanting in nature.

Program coordinators note the value of connecting the incarcerated to the world beyond bars and razor wire. Prisoners say they feel like they're being prepared to do something meaningful once their time is served.

RxArt: Brightening the Lives of Hospital Patients

Hospital rooms can be dreary and completely void of the touches of a home-like atmosphere.  RxArt exists to  brighten up a gloomy, clinical environment using some paint and colorful, contemporary art.

"The New York based nonprofit was started in 2000 by Director Diane Brown with a project at Rockefeller University Hospital in New York. Brown attributes her inspiration for RxArt to her own fear of hospitals."

RxArt is a non-profit organization seeking to promote healing and inspire hope in patients, families and staff.